IQ2 Video

Watch the highlights from a great season of Intelligence Squared debates, discussions and conversations, featuring Max Mosley, Elizabeth Gilbert, Edward Luttwak, Rowan Williams, Pervez Musharraf, William Gibson, Debbie Purdy, Stephen Bayley, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Dom Antony Sutch, Sara Raza, P. J. O'Rourke, Simon Jenkins and Heather Mills.

Steak and kidney pie. The Sunday roast. Mmm, delicious. In fact more than delicious, part of our way of life. Part of our common humanity, too, since eating meat is probably what allowed our brains to grow big enough to become fully human in the first place. So how could anyone be persuaded to give up eating it? Easy, say the vegetarians. Go to an abattoir. Listen to the shrieks, look at the fear in the eyes of the cow. Then go to a supermarket and look at the results of that bloodfest all neatly packaged up to disguise the cruelty and suffering that preceded the shrink wrap. No one with a streak of compassion, no one who calls themselves human could then stretch out their hand, plonk the slaughter in their shopping basket and feel they were doing right. Or could they? Come to the debate and find out. The full video is available at www.intelligencesquared.com

We have just announced our Spring 2011 season, and are excited to be hosting such well-known and respected figures as, among others, Werner Herzog, Martin Rees, David Davis, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Richard Lindley, Roger Cohen, Rory Stewart, Brian Cox, Bill Emmott, Gideon Rachman, Roberto Jaguaribe, Clive James, Andrew Motion, Wendy Cope, Anthony Barnett, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Daniel Hannan, Timothy Garton Ash, Kathy Lette, and Jane Bussmann. This video is a preview of some of the speakers we are excited about welcoming back this season - all footage is from previous Intelligence Squared or partner events

P.J. O'Rourke is America's premier political satirist and has more citations in The Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations than any other living writer. In this live appearance for Intelligence Squared he'll be discussing his new book, Don't Vote -- It Just Encourages the Bastards, a brilliant, hilarious and ultimately sobering look at why politics and politicians are a necessary evil—but only just barely necessary. Moving from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman to a late-night girls' boarding school game called Kill-F*@k-Marry, O'Rourke will explore the nature of the social contract. For him the essential elements are power, freedom and responsibility: the people like the freedom part, politicians like the power part, and hardly anyone wants to hear the responsibility part. This leads him to postulate the "Death, Sex and Boredom Theory of Politics." Full video available www.intelligencesquared.co

Since the 1990s, New York galleries have witnessed an unprecedented 78% increase in exhibitions of Asian art, the bulk of it contemporary. Precipitated by the circumstances of their rapidly expanding economies, daily life for many in the East is undergoing something of a revolution. Contemporary art is part of this revolution. It realises the East's rapidly evolving tastes, aspirations, and categories of consciousness, whilst articulating the accompanying anxieties about loss of identity and cultural specificity. Contemporary Art from the East both grapples with, and typifies, the problems of globalised modernity. Should we see this new cultural outpouring as the spoils or the victim of rapid globalisation? The full video is available at www.intelligencesquared.com

If you're a Sikh in Britain you don't have to wear a motorcycle helmet. If you're a Muslim woman at work, no one objects if you wrap your head in a scarf. But woe betide you if you dare assert your faith or customs as a Christian. You can't display a small crucifix around your neck if you work for British Airways; you can't run an adoption agency on Christian principles because insisting that your charges be placed with heterosexual couples is now against the law; you can't make use of the hallowed principle of free speech to publicly express a Christian disapproval of homosexual unions without being cautioned or prosecuted. What we are witnessing is not just the death of the Christian culture which until but recently defined our history and way of life, but a positively hateful animus towards it on the part of officialdom and the bien pensants. Or so many Christians like to claim. But do they not protest too much? Why make such a fuss about the occasional tensions that seem unavoidable when you have a secular state and a multi-faith society? Surely the laws they love to lament are laws that apply to everyone? Could it be that the carping Christians have an agenda of their own and are demanding special treatment? Or are they right in saying that they already receive special treatment -- an especially horrible one? The full video is available at www.intelligencesquared.com

In the beginning was the challenge: how to use eye, hand and brain to represent the significance of the world to our fellow humans. There followed the sinuous cave paintings of Perigord; the rigid, sparkling mosaics of Ravenna; the stunning Renaissance discovery of perspective. And the fellow humans marvelled at the dexterity of hand and the conceptual ingenuity of eye and brain behind such visions, and glorified them as art. But how do we feel now that the machine has interposed itself between ourselves and the world? Now that the dexterity of hand has been replaced by the finger's click on the camera shutter? Now that the imagination of eye and brain has been confined within the rectangle of the viewfinder? If there is great art here, doesn't it lie in the creation of the camera itself rather than the pictures it takes? Is it not the genius of the scientists who devised the camera's intricate mechanisms and powerful lenses that we should now marvel at, rather than the output of the adepts who operate the machine? Or are we still too much in thrall to the notion of art held by our pre-industrial forbears? Shouldn't we just accept that art has been freed of its ancient constraints, and acknowledge that the finest photographers offer us an interpretation of the world quite as original as that of the great painters; that in the digital age, photography is now the medium that matters? The full video is available at www.intelligencesquared.com

Is the great age of exploration over? Has the modern traveller swapped Ulysses' quest for the Happy Isles for a short break at the Holiday Inn? Maybe. But most of us still yearn for the rough, rugged and romantic places of the explorer's imagination, places where no travel company has been before us.... And some of Britain's greatest explorers and travellers will be taking us there, in mind if not in body, as they examine the past, present and future of great exploration. Justin Marozzi will introduce Herodotus, the first explorer as well as the father of history, and follow his high-spirited travels through Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece, examining sex, war and exploration in the fifth century BC. Anthony Sattin will then guide us through the Age of Enlightenment, the greatest age of exploration, and the perfect intersection of knowledge and desire, possibility and challenge. Nowhere was more challenging than the interior of Africa, to which Sir Joseph Banks and his friends turned their attention, sending Mungo Park and other brilliant travellers in search of the lost city of Timbuktu. Christina Dodwell will pay tribute to the great women explorers of the past, including her grandmother who made intrepid journeys by mule in China during the time of the warlords. Bringing us up to date, she'll recount her latest horse safari in Madagascar where she's setting up a new form of eco-tourism for the local economy. John Gimlette will talk about his adventures in Paraguay, Newfoundland, Labrador and the Guianas. During his travels he has often crossed paths with the early explorers and will select a few of his favourites. Amongst them are great men who fail, and the occasional loser who mysteriously triumphs. Benedict Allen famously pioneered the filming of expeditions for television, by doing away with a camera-crew and instead capturing experiences as they happened using a hand-held video camera. He'll reveal the highs and lows of recording his hazardous journeys - from being thrown from his horse in the Andes on his first day filming, to being shot at by hit-men. Robin Hanbury-Tenison will recount leading the Royal Geographical Society's expedition to the interior of Borneo, which launched the rainforest movement and earned him the Society's Gold Medal. He founded Survival International, of which he is President, and is a tireless champion of exploration and the benefits it brings mankind. Ed Stafford became the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon River in August 2010 - a trek that took him 859 days. He'll tell how he ate piranhas, fended off deadly vipers and sustained 50,000 mosquito bites. His scariest moments weren't with the wildlife, however, but when he encountered hostility from remote tribal peoples. After the presentations the speakers will debate the motion "Exploring is good for the explorer but not much good for those being explored." The full video is available on www.intelligencesquared.com

The law allows me to kill myself, but what if I have a progressive illness and reach a stage when I long to end my life but cannot do so unaided. Isn't it needlessly cruel and illogical that as the law stands, no friend or family member or doctor can then help me die without risking prosecution and a possible jail sentence? No it isn't, say those who oppose legalising assisted suicide. Think of the pressures that would build once it became a legally sanctioned option -- not least the pressure to extend the category of those whom it is permissible to help kill beyond the terminally ill to the old, the frail and even the mildly depressed. Think of the internal and external pressure on elderly relatives to seek assistance for an early exit so as to avoid being a burden and using up the family inheritance; or the pressure on the NHS to create more bed space. Would it not be better, say opponents of legalisation, to retain the kind of fudge we've got at the moment, allowing the Director of Public Prosecutions to give a nod and a wink to assisted suicide unless he suspects foul play? Or is that just a recipe for the very uncertainty -- and attendant misery -- that gives rise to such passionate calls for a change in the law in the first place? Full video available at: http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events

Event info: During the ongoing global financial crisis, the values on which our society and economic structures are based have been called into question. In a new book to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of The Guardian, have brought together a collection of leading commentators to examine the role of morality and ethics in business. At this event, both discuss these fundamental themes together with Zac Goldsmith MP, Editor of The Ecologist, and Robert Skidelsky, professor of political economy, politician and historian.

"Many people are asking that I should come back". Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is launching his own political party, the All Pakistan Muslim League, on October 1st. This conversation with Sir Christopher Meyer for Intelligence Squared is his only live public appearance in the run up to the launch.

Featuring Shlomo Ben-Ami, Edward Luttwak and Mustafa Barghouthi arguing for the motion, against Martin Indyk, Jonathan Paris and Manuel Hassassian. Chaired by Richard Lindley. Watch the full video at http://www.intelligencesquared.com/ The debate took place at Methodist Central Hall, London on September 21st 2010

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, will be talking about her life and writing for the first time in the UK at this exclusive Intelligence Squared event. Eat, Pray, Love is an international bestseller, which has sold seven million copies worldwide and is due for release as a film starring Julia Roberts. Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoirs are the funny, tender, utterly beguiling story of a woman's search for happiness. Elizabeth is in her thirties, married and about to start a family. But she doesn’t want any of it. A divorce and a rebound fling later, she emerges battered yet determined to find what she’s been missing. So begins her quest – food in Italy, enlightenment in India and love in Bali. Having sworn off marriage forever, US immigration force her to choose between exile and somehow coming to terms with marriage again

Are you entitled to your private life? Or do you think the News of the World has every right to make it public? Should you just take it on the chin when prying newshounds inform the world of whatever details, true or false, they rake up on your private life, leaving you to clear up the inaccuracies only after your reputation has been trashed? That would appear to be the case in Britain, given that - unlike say in the USA or France - there is no right to privacy here, only a "right to confidence", and the tabloid press have allegedly been tapping the phones of prominent figures for years.

"Science is value free. So is a gun." Here, science writer Ben Goldacre describes the problems with science coverage in the mainstream media. Too often it's used towards political and social ends, exemplified most clearly in schizophrenic reporting of the cervical cancer vaccine. Ben Goldacre is interviewed by Jack Klaff for Intelligence Squared (IQ2).